PlasticPilot.net

Dear Flight Instructors,

As a private pilot with instrument rating, I spent several dozen of hours seating beside one of you in a light aircraft. I want to thank you for the excellent job you do. I’m convinced you’re the cornerstone of aviation, and carry a huge responsibility.

You teach us, train us, help us developing our flying skills, guide us towards new ratings. Long story short, you make pilots out of normal persons, and always staying on the safe side. Many of you do that for astonishing low salary, when not for free.

Flying is your primary activity, or a side job, and you share is with us. Most of you are paid on a flight-time basis, but you know we also need you and your time on ground. So you don’t try to save every minute, nor do “hello - jump in - fly - jump out - good bye” flying lessons.

You don’t try to act as “gurus” or “Grand Masters” either, nor to look impressive. You’re always available, and we respect you for the job you do, and how good you do it. As we know you’re always open and find time for all our stupid questions, we never hesitate to ask, and ask again.

The harder part of your job (correct me if I’m wrong) is also to be examples for all the other pilots. When you’re on board, be it for instruction or as a safety pilot, you always do everything as needed. No slight deviation, bad practice, deviation from procedure, or other silly things. No cow-boys allowed in that business.

No complacency either. As important members of the flying community, you have lots of pilot friends, but you also know how to address remarks in a good way, even negative ones. How hard can it be to tell to a friend that his flying skills are not sufficient ?

I’ll may be someday become a member of your family, and help a new generation of pilots to earn their wings. If so, I’ll do my best to achieve the same level of excellene, and perpetuate the tradition of teaching from within the community, to ensure the future of aviation.

If you don’t recognize yourself in the portait I depicted here, please let me know why. I could have called this post “My dream of a perfect instructor”, but it would have been unfair to all those of you who perfectly match it.

Mrs. and Mr. Flight Instructor, Thank You. Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart.

Two highly experienced instructors I personally knew got killed during instruction flights in the past months and the initial shock has been replaced by an uneasy feeling. Most instructors I had the chance to fly with were at least 25 years older than me and very experienced. This certainly helped me to trust them almost blindly - which I think is necessary at some steps in the process of learning to fly. So when such a person dies in an aviation accident many questions arise…

No other post remained in my drafts list longer than this one - a strong sign that the topic is sensitive. Instructors are an important cornerstone of aviation. To obtain a private license an average student pilot flies for 50 hours with (or under supervision of) an instructor and 2.5 hours with an examiner. Letting a student pilot fly alone on board is the instructor responsibility !

Are these incidents result of bad luck ? Of the macho attitude ? Technical or health problem ? None of the reports have been published yet, but even if the investigation establish human error as the main cause my respect for these two instructors will remain untouched.

When studying Human Factors we learn many things about what can lead pilots to do silly things, hoping we will avoid it. It certainly helps but no one will ever be fully protected from a making wrong decision - not even instructors. Most of time these errors do not have consequences because aviation’s safety system works fine - remember, safety is absence of unacceptable risk, not absence of risk.

All accidents carry some lessons and these two will be no exception. The investigations will establish the facts but I want to stress out again that it will not be a judgement.

One can not judge the career of someone on the base of a single event. We all make mistakes which have various consequences depending on the context and circumstances. If mistakes have been made in these incidents (not established yet !), they won’t waste all the achievements that came before.

What I will remember when thinking of these two instructors is their fantastic career, made of dedication, patience and pedagogy. I will not forget all the efforts they made to help pilots like me to be better pilots !